Mutually Assured Destruction
by Walking Happy Meal
Summary: Buffy's imploding. Dawn can relate. Cue angst and emotional detachment.


Mutually Assured Destruction 1/1   
By The Walking Happy Meal (walkinghappymeal[at]rinkworks[dot]com)   
http://www.geocities.com/walkinghappymeal/   
Rated G   
Spoilers up to 'All The Way'   
Archival by permission only   
  
  
He's gone back to lurking around the house occasionally, since Buffy   
came back. Sometimes I'll see him and he'll pretend he wasn't. That   
it was just a friendly social call. He always says the same thing.   
  
"How are things in the land of the living?"   
  
I wish he wouldn't.   
  
Before I burnt them all, I used to keep three diaries at once. One   
would be full of obviously fake stuff and would be left on my   
dresser. That was the joke diary. The second one would be full of   
faked stuff too, but that would be plausible. That one was hidden in   
a shoebox in my underwear drawer. The last diary was my *real* one.   
That was full of my most secret thoughts and was on my bookshelf in   
the dust jacket of a different book.   
  
A lot of the time, I'd spend longer filling in the second diary than   
the first. That would be the one Buffy read. I almost let slip to her   
one time that the shoe-box one wasn't my *real* diary either.   
  
///If they're really spying on you all the time, you just say   
something so you know they'll hear you. Like sometimes, I write fake   
things in my diary, in case...///   
  
I thought she might have guessed, but she was all hung up over Riley   
that day and she didn't notice.   
  
Anyway, I was used to her trying to snoop in my diary. She did it all   
the time and I did it right back and I did it *after* she came back.   
  
And now I know.   
  
I know all about how she was in heaven until Willow yanked her out. I   
know how she feels that she's disconnected from everything, like   
she's seeing the world through tinted glasses and knowing that   
something's wrong about the picture. How much it hurts that the only   
person she thinks she can share this with is a neutered vampire who   
cheats at kitten poker. How scared she is of letting slip to me that   
everything's not perfect. How lonely, how afraid and how certain,   
beneath everything else, that she's not supposed to be here. That she   
should be dead and even secretly wants to be.   
  
And I can't tell her that I feel the same way.   
  
I'm all used up inside. Not just the Key part of me, the Dawn part. I   
was all ready to take a dive into the portal myself, until she   
stopped me. I'd started it, so I was gonna finish it. Things would   
have come full circle and maybe I could have atoned for the billions   
of years of evil deeds that I committed and can't remember. Life   
would go on like it had before the monks majicked me out of nowhere   
and it would fit, y'know? It would be symmetrical. In a twisted way   
it would have been beautiful.   
  
But then she stopped me and I froze. I stood there and let her   
explain that she was gonna kill herself and even though I could have   
stopped her and should have stopped her, I didn't.   
  
I chickened out.   
  
And that's why everything feels so out of step now. Why I have to   
concentrate so hard on just looking at things to stop the static that   
fizzles down from behind my eyelids and threatens to fade me out of   
existence like a TV that's going slowly out of tune. Why I cry when   
nobody can see me. Why I came so close to letting myself be a vamp   
snack. Why I stopped writing diaries altogether after the night she   
died. That sticky molasses thought that lies underneath all my other   
ones that I should be dead and that I. Should. Not. Be. Here.   
  
And I can't tell her. Not ever.   
  
She died to keep me safe. After she died, she was at peace, knowing   
that I was happy and alive.   
  
I know exactly what she's going through and I can't say a word,   
because if I did it would crucify her to know that she was going   
through it for nothing.   
  
Because I'm not safe. I'm not happy. I'm not living either, not   
really.   
  
And I can never tell a soul...or in this case, the soulless.   
  
"How are things in the land of the living?"   
  
"Fine," I answer. Same as I always do.   
  
But we're not living.   
  
Just existing. 


End file.
